Yesterday, we did a spectacularly long and perhaps unpleasant workout here of the sort that we don’t frequently undertake.  I received plenty of feedback about it, mostly stuff like, “I’ve never felt like I was going to [...]]]> Theresa and Lorna ran the Disney Half Marathon on Sunday in 2hrs and 8minutes!!  Congratulations Ladies.

Yesterday, we did a spectacularly long and perhaps unpleasant workout here of the sort that we don’t frequently undertake.  I received plenty of feedback about it, mostly stuff like, “I’ve never felt like I was going to be sick before.  This was the first time.”  People also commented on how different it felt to do something in the 30-40minute range as opposed to our more frequent 5-15minute range.  As is perhaps human nature, there is the gut response of “that was so hard, we should do it more often, so that I can be more of a super-person”.  So, here is where I let you in on a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes in my programming philosophy at our Affiliate (aided, abetted and cleverly supported by Dave).

CrossFit is supposed to move you further along the path to wellness.  By doing CrossFit you are supposed to be less sick/injured and more well/healthy.  Believe it or not, my job is not to crush you with a killer workout each and every day.  My job is to program workouts that make you more well, fit and healthy not just now while you are young and strong (all relative of course).  CrossFit is supposed to be done at high intensity and teaching you all to work at high intensity is one of the most difficult pieces of teaching CrossFit.  You all do not work at high intensity if the workout goes on too long.  What I saw yesterday during that long, hard workout was a whole bunch of people who had learned to work at high intensity!!  You all actually kept it up for the majority of that workout.  If you regularly did workouts that were 30-50minutes long what you would know how to do was work for a long time at moderate intensity.  Instead you all have been trained, pretty damn well I observed, to hit a workout HARD no matter what it looks like.  If I did that to you with workouts 4 times per week instead of 2 or 3 times per month you would not do it like that.

More importantly, from my perspective, is that if we had you doing long, long hard workouts on a frequent basis you all would get over trained and worn down remarkably fast.  Dave and I want to get the most from you physically while you do the least (I know sometimes that is not what it feels like).  I was talking recently with someone who has done a fair bit of CrossFitting, about something called Adrenal Fatigue.  This is an issue that is currently in vogue and while we don’t have to jump on the bandwagon we should know what it is.  Your adrenal glands produce all your sex (testosterone) and stress hormones (using cholesterol as their raw material I might add).  When you are repeatedly subjected to high stress, whether it is from illness, life, work or training you eventually ask too much of your adrenal glands and they can’t keep up with you.  Adrenal Fatigue includes a complicated set of symptoms but include depression, exhaustion, trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep and then trouble waking up.  Adrenal Fatigue is common in endurance athletes and…over trained CrossFitters.  What do I mean by overtrained CrossFitters?  Crossfitters who work out like endurance athletes, for 30-50min per day!  So, think of yesterday’s workout as your own little CrossFit Game.  Your training prepared you for that, but it doesn’t mean you should do it as your training.  Make sense?  If it doesn’t post your questions to the comments…